evilbob
Explorer
the results
The group started by encountering the crone. They were extremely warey (what's this old lady doing out here in the middle of nowhere?) but decided to help find her Henry and easily found the ogres. Since the group had just started playing and were eager to try out their stuff, they quickly laid waste to the two poor ogres after having used the better part of their resources for the day. Only one player caught that the donkey was Henry - the rest kept looking for the "guy," who they thought would be her husband or son. Eventually they got it, though, and accepted the turnips and advice for a reward (they never ate them). They completely missed/ignored all hints about the crone being strong or powerful, although they did take her advice on searching the tower, and they found the area below it. The funniest part of the whole adventure was them trying to figure out the well at the bottom of the tower. They probably spent 30 minutes discussing it, throwing things into it (including one of the newly discovered MW stones), and finally sending a character down into it to check it out. It was hilarious how long it took them to figure out it really was just a well, although it almost had a negative effect on a later encounter... My guess is that they weren't used to so much descriptive text.
Later, they encountered the farm house and rested there (and dried out from the previous harrowing well experience!). They noticed the comb on the farmhouse's well, and took it to be an ill omen: they were convinced that between the comb and the ribbons some little girl had drowned there, and that the cover was not to be moved or else! They very nearly left the well alone entirely - especially after their last "well" experience - but I think I managed to drop enough hints that they finally convinced themselves to open the well. They expected the worst, and so they never even got any water from the well and were hardly surprised when a head floated to the surface.
The encounter with the heads went pretty smoothly; for some reason they never really heavily questioned the orders of these non-undead-but-still-animated heads. (The fact that they were not undead puzzled them quite a bit, however.) It took them only a few tries to get the skill checks, and they only needed one Diplomacy check to get some bonus information (the checks were only 2 higher for 6th level characters - this made the encounter possibly too easy). They got the bag of gold easliy, although the "wrong" character went after the sword - not through greed; it was just more efficient that way. I had to drop a few more hints in order to get them to understand the situation; otherwise they were assuming that the head had simply lied and that was that. Maybe one brother only tells lies? (I'm sure they've never encountered a quest that was "person-specific" before.) When finished, they dutifully noted everything they had been told, and when the heads bounced back into the well they covered it up and left the comb(!) for anyone else who came along. (I thought that was such a nice and unexpected gesture I gave them a small XP reward.)
They passed into faerieland without much todo - although in my campaign as well I had one character who preferred to stay far away from the others (he hated how loud they were when he was so good at being sneaky). When I passed him a note that said "you are hopelessly lost" he laughed - he knew his stand-offish practices had come back to bite him.
They accepted Bryne of Lig without incident and figured out the clue about feeding him. No one ever took the bait about eating the forbidden fruit in faerieland, especially after they had been warned; maybe my players have all seen Pan's Labyrinth or something... (Also, food and water are generally de-emphasized in my campaigns because characters have ready access to magic that can provide them.) They also took the advice about staying on the path VERY seriously; I think it may have traumatized them! Then, after only a couple of hints (did I mention they were all fairly new players?) they realized they hadn't seen the sneaky guy in a while. They had to burn one "use" of Bryne to get him back, and honestly it was one of the best interactions I've seen in the game: the stand-offish player learned his lesson well and has stuck with the group ever since (even after leaving faerieland).
They later came to the house of "stone" and burned a detect magic; they quickly discovered it was actually made of bone. They tried to heed the head's advice, but the character who knocked on the door stated after trying to parlay with the old man: "Come to the door and I'll give you what you want." To which the old man replied, "Done!" Much head-hanging was done at that point. Needless to say, the character was frustrated when he realized the bargain he'd made, but to his credit he decided he would make it good and he did. He tried to offer the old man more of the good red wine - which a successful Diplomacy check helped a great deal - and then I came up with a good idea that used the character's abilities well. The old man offered the stick only for a "large quantity" of blood - and when asked how much, he presented a bucket. (Yikes!) However, this character had an ability to heal a small amount of damage each round once he fell below half HP. So, the way it worked was: he bled. And he bled and bled and bled. The bucket (magical, of course) wasn't going to be full until it held over three times the blood of a single human, and so he continually used his ability (slowly losing ground each time) to heal himself to have more blood to give. Finally, when the group's other healer had to use some of their abilities to keep him from unconciousness, that was enough. I figured this was pretty justified, so they got the staff.
(Continued below...)
The group started by encountering the crone. They were extremely warey (what's this old lady doing out here in the middle of nowhere?) but decided to help find her Henry and easily found the ogres. Since the group had just started playing and were eager to try out their stuff, they quickly laid waste to the two poor ogres after having used the better part of their resources for the day. Only one player caught that the donkey was Henry - the rest kept looking for the "guy," who they thought would be her husband or son. Eventually they got it, though, and accepted the turnips and advice for a reward (they never ate them). They completely missed/ignored all hints about the crone being strong or powerful, although they did take her advice on searching the tower, and they found the area below it. The funniest part of the whole adventure was them trying to figure out the well at the bottom of the tower. They probably spent 30 minutes discussing it, throwing things into it (including one of the newly discovered MW stones), and finally sending a character down into it to check it out. It was hilarious how long it took them to figure out it really was just a well, although it almost had a negative effect on a later encounter... My guess is that they weren't used to so much descriptive text.
Later, they encountered the farm house and rested there (and dried out from the previous harrowing well experience!). They noticed the comb on the farmhouse's well, and took it to be an ill omen: they were convinced that between the comb and the ribbons some little girl had drowned there, and that the cover was not to be moved or else! They very nearly left the well alone entirely - especially after their last "well" experience - but I think I managed to drop enough hints that they finally convinced themselves to open the well. They expected the worst, and so they never even got any water from the well and were hardly surprised when a head floated to the surface.
The encounter with the heads went pretty smoothly; for some reason they never really heavily questioned the orders of these non-undead-but-still-animated heads. (The fact that they were not undead puzzled them quite a bit, however.) It took them only a few tries to get the skill checks, and they only needed one Diplomacy check to get some bonus information (the checks were only 2 higher for 6th level characters - this made the encounter possibly too easy). They got the bag of gold easliy, although the "wrong" character went after the sword - not through greed; it was just more efficient that way. I had to drop a few more hints in order to get them to understand the situation; otherwise they were assuming that the head had simply lied and that was that. Maybe one brother only tells lies? (I'm sure they've never encountered a quest that was "person-specific" before.) When finished, they dutifully noted everything they had been told, and when the heads bounced back into the well they covered it up and left the comb(!) for anyone else who came along. (I thought that was such a nice and unexpected gesture I gave them a small XP reward.)
They passed into faerieland without much todo - although in my campaign as well I had one character who preferred to stay far away from the others (he hated how loud they were when he was so good at being sneaky). When I passed him a note that said "you are hopelessly lost" he laughed - he knew his stand-offish practices had come back to bite him.
They accepted Bryne of Lig without incident and figured out the clue about feeding him. No one ever took the bait about eating the forbidden fruit in faerieland, especially after they had been warned; maybe my players have all seen Pan's Labyrinth or something... (Also, food and water are generally de-emphasized in my campaigns because characters have ready access to magic that can provide them.) They also took the advice about staying on the path VERY seriously; I think it may have traumatized them! Then, after only a couple of hints (did I mention they were all fairly new players?) they realized they hadn't seen the sneaky guy in a while. They had to burn one "use" of Bryne to get him back, and honestly it was one of the best interactions I've seen in the game: the stand-offish player learned his lesson well and has stuck with the group ever since (even after leaving faerieland).
They later came to the house of "stone" and burned a detect magic; they quickly discovered it was actually made of bone. They tried to heed the head's advice, but the character who knocked on the door stated after trying to parlay with the old man: "Come to the door and I'll give you what you want." To which the old man replied, "Done!" Much head-hanging was done at that point.
Needless to say, the character was frustrated when he realized the bargain he'd made, but to his credit he decided he would make it good and he did. He tried to offer the old man more of the good red wine - which a successful Diplomacy check helped a great deal - and then I came up with a good idea that used the character's abilities well. The old man offered the stick only for a "large quantity" of blood - and when asked how much, he presented a bucket. (Yikes!) However, this character had an ability to heal a small amount of damage each round once he fell below half HP. So, the way it worked was: he bled. And he bled and bled and bled. The bucket (magical, of course) wasn't going to be full until it held over three times the blood of a single human, and so he continually used his ability (slowly losing ground each time) to heal himself to have more blood to give. Finally, when the group's other healer had to use some of their abilities to keep him from unconciousness, that was enough. I figured this was pretty justified, so they got the staff.(Continued below...)
